Breakfast of champions!

I’m still suffering a bit of residual reticence over having to haul myself and my luggage down to Gatwick in less than 48 hours for a long-haul flight to the land of my birth. Don’t know the reference? I had to look it up it was so fuzzy in my head, but it’s from the first lines of a patriotic-sing-along-song from a fifth grade or so school pageant:

This is my country! Land of my birth!
This is my country! Grandest on earth!
I pledge thee my allegiance, America, the bold,
For this is my country to have and to hold.

It’s all so much more amusing now that I moved to the country where the tune of “My country, ’tis of thee” is just a second rate song sung to the tune of “God Save the Queen.” (Did you know that the same tune is used for the Royal Anthem of Norway? Nope, neither did I. Thanks Wikipedia! Strangely reminding me of the vast number of songs that use the tune for Pachelbel’s cannon in D…)

I digress! How shocking!

I was recently reminded of another good reason to go back to the states. Old Home cottage cheese. Part of my standard breakfast when in Minnesota, unavailable to me when I lived on the east coast, and certainly not available here. Yes, it has to be Old Home, in the blue container, small curd. Why? I don’t know. Because it’s been made the same way since 1925? Because it was selected “Best cottage cheese in the nation”? Whatever the reason, it’s the ONLY cottage cheese that I like. And I love it and can eat a large tub of it in one sitting, every day, for breakfast with toast made from Brownberry “Health nut” bread. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

The bread here is not nearly as good as the Brownberry stuff, at least not the sliced sort. I get tired of having to get out my monster knife to slice bread when I’m out of it in the morning, and I admittedly still do not have a toaster that runs on UK power. And here they do all sorts of unmentionable things to cottage cheese, like mixing in prawns. The English are obsessed with prawns and they like to put them in places that I would never put them, like in a sandwich or in cottage cheese. Yes, in stir-fry Asian food, but not everywhere else. Please. So there we have it, my wish for a breakfast in Minneapolis. Now if only my suitcase would pack itself…